I'm Real (And I Don't Feel Like A Boy)
by isawet
Summary: Going to high school with friends is surreal. (2017 Movie, Trini/Kimberly, Fake Dating)


High school with friends is surreal. Trini thinks the last time she had a friend, she was in the second grade. His name was Daviv and they used to wrestle in the grass until her teacher snitched her out to her parents and she got sat down at dinner and told that's not how young ladies act. She sank into herself and balled her fists and when they moved schools two months later, they had a screaming fight every morning because her mother made her wear a dress to school. Her father told her she looked pretty with a weak smile as he dropped her off and she whispered she hated him when she shut the door, letting the slam drown her out.

It's easier not to have friends, she thinks. It feels cleaner. And they move so much it doesn't seem to matter one way or the other.

She tries to remember if her friendship with Daviv went beyond playing in the grass or digging in the sandbox, or when she used to sit in line for lunch with the blonde girl from her class and play the handslap games with the rhyming songs she can still half sing, stuck in her sense memory forever. It doesn't feel the same as sitting next to Billy and watching him arrange his food by color and shape and line up his carrot sticks just so before chomping on them in even bites, or the same as when Jason insists on checking on her injuries after training, sharp eyes and careful fingers as he tests the rotation of her elbow. She's not sure, but she doesn't think it felt this warm.

/

She has biology with Kimberly and homeroom with Billy and Saturday detention with all of them, and every other class feels like a pointless drag. She and Zack usually cut English and meet up under the bleachers. He lights a cigarette and tells her it's an experiment to see if the accelerated Ranger healing covers black lungs and it makes her smile enough she splits it with him. "Jason's gonna kill us," she muses, and ashes into his hair to make him sputter and glare and stand straight for once, out of her reach.

"We're the crazy ones," Zack says, "who else is going to keep the Boy Scout on his toes?"

They finish the cigarette and Zack strips off his sweatshirt to lay it out on the roof of her car, Trini following him to the parking lot for lack of anything better to do. "Why?" she asks.

Zack shakes it out a few times and drapes it to lie in the sun. "I can't go home smelling like smoke," he says, finger playing at the mended stitches at the hem of one of the sleeves. "My dad smoked."

"Dipped?" Trini asks, almost flippant. "Or in the ground?"

It's something that wouldn't work on almost anyone else, she thinks, but Zack blinks twice and slings an arm around her shoulder. "Da was an overachiever," he says. "He's buried in the Departed Angels Grove on Wrethen and his new family lives in one of those fancy condos on Strand."

Trini throws his arm off. "We just moved here, I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Okay," Zack says, and they go to the cemetery. They take Strand Avenue so they can flip off the fancy condos on the way.

There are graves dating back hundreds of years and statues worn away by time and chipped something awful. Trini knows prayers in two languages for two different religions and she uses her fingernails to scrape the dirt away from the granite to expose names of people long, long gone.

Zack leads her to the newer section, greener grass that's neatly trimmed and clean stones, tiny flags stuck gently into the plots. He stops at the one that bears his last name. "Do you have any idea," he says, and it's still striking to see his face so serious, even though she's seen him crying and in pain and in a giant metal robot fighting machine. Sincere emotion that isn't pain is startling on him, alien. "Any idea," he repeats, "how glad I am that I look like my mom instead of him?" He makes a noise in his throat, like he's considering spitting on his father's grave.

Trini thinks she could tell him about her father, how he left her his name and the faded memory of the radio playing in the kitchen and dark hair and sitting in his lap while he listened to the radio in the early morning. How sometimes she wishes her stepfather was more awful so her hatred felt more justified. Instead she socks him in the shoulder. "That fence," she says, jerking her chin to the tall iron wrought thing with spikes on the tips that separates the cemetery from the woods. "Pretty high." He blinks at her. "I bet I could jump it from here."

Zack takes a breath and it rattles shaky through his lungs. He's holding her wrist in his fingers and she feels it, the grid or the morph or whatever the fuck ancient bullshit binds them together; static on their skin. "You're on," he says.

/

There's a corner of the ship that Trini and Kimberly have claimed as their own, to store their things and change. They keep a box of tampons there, just in case, and a change of clothes, and sometimes Trini stretches and sits and breathes and plays her music loud enough to drown everything else out while Kim reads, stretched out on the metal floor, a yoga mat laid out to protect her from the grating.

Trini clicks her music off and rolls her neck, standing to feel the warmth of loose muscles, the sweet kick of endorphins. She nudges Kim's foot. "Hey."

Kim closes her book with a snap and a glower. "What?"

Trini arches an eyebrow.

Kim closes her eyes for a beat. When she opens them she's forcibly calmer. "Sorry. I broke the gearshift off my car this morning."

Trini makes a noise of commiseration. "I went through eight pens yesterday in one period."

Kim groans, pressing her hands to her eyes. "We'll get used to it soon, right?" She looks so dejected and unhappy and hours earlier she'd stormed into biology with coffee splattered on her shirt and the snickering from the hallway audible and looked like she wanted to cry the entire lecture.

"Come over," Trini suggests, before she can stop herself. "Tomorrow, the rest day. After school."

Kim blinks at her. "Really?"

Trini shrugs. "Up to you. Come, don't come, it's the same to me."

Trini's late from picking up her brother and growling at the red lights all the way home. Kim's car is parked at the curb and she practically hauls her brother out of the back seat, frog-marching him up the front steps. She bangs through the front door and thinks she might have dented the knob in her hand on accident. She forces herself to let go of her brother's jacket instead of shoving him the way she wants to-a horrifying flash of thought involving him going headfirst through the wall is enough to calm her, at least a little.

"Trini?" Kim's voice floats out from the living room. Her head peeks up from the couch. "Hey. Your dad let me in."

A tea set is spread out in front of her, cheap and made for children but real porcelain, decorated with small colourful flowers, a different one for each cup. "What are you doing?"

Kim nudges the yellow daisy cup towards her foot. "That one is for you."

Trini rolls her eyes. "I thought we were-" she catches sight of her brothers, lurking obviously and poorly hidden in the kitchen. "-going for a run."

"I think we can… _run_ just fine right here." Kim picks up her empty teacup and takes a large, exaggerated sip. One of Trini's brothers drops something and the resounding clunk makes Kim jump. Her fist tightens, turning the cup into dust and jagged pieces in her hand and on the carpet. She blinks at the mess, looking forlorn.

"Maybe outside," Trini suggests. They gather up the rest of the set and carry it out to the yard, Trini pausing to (very carefully) lick her finger and stick it in her brother's ear.

Kim comes up with a bag of skittles in her jacket pocket and tips them into the teapot. They eat them one at a time and practice holding the cups between two fingers, by the handle. They toss them at each other while they sit cross-legged a few feet apart in the brown grass. By the time Trini's snapped the milk jug in half and Kim's broken another mug, they seem to have gotten the hang of it.

"I thought it would take longer," Trini admits.

"I think it's reflexive." Kim's lips purse, her brow furrowing as she thinks. "Like… when it was life or death we didn't need to practice it all. Our reflexes are better. Instinctually, we get it. But now everything's slowed down and we're overthinking it."

Trini has nothing to add. She tosses a cup up and down in one hand, then the other, switching back and forth. It's the cup with the pink carnation, and she smirks when she sees Kim notice, an eyebrow arching in a challenge.

Kim grins. She snatches at the cup, just a hair too slow, Trini batting her away easily. "Too slow," she says, mock apologetic.

They trade swats and flickers of movement too quick for the unenhanced eye to catch, and Trini doesn't know she's grinning fierce and brilliant until Kim says "I didn't think of you as a tea party kid" and she feels it die away.

The cup falls between them, smashing on the ground. "My father bought it for me," she says, short. "Before he died." She sees Kim's confusion and rushes to explain, eager to prevent further discussion. "A long time ago. Tim is my stepfather."

"Oh." Kim opens her mouth and Trini stands, quick.

"I think that's enough for today."

/

Jason calls a meeting. He has somehow obtained copies of their progress report cards and is frowning strictly down at all of them, except Billy, who has made honor roll and is scribbling into a notebook in the corner, talking quietly to himself.

"Gee, pops," Zack says, playing his Ranger coin through his fingers. "Does this mean I get the belt?"

Trini and Kim meet each other's eyes to roll them in sync. Jason ignores the interruption. "Failing grades mean summer school. I'm not your father, I'm not in charge of your dreams. But we agreed on more training this summer. More research. And I am in charge of the team."

Trini frowns at her own card, the paper faintly wet from their plunge into the pit. She doesn't think it's mathematically possible for her to do better than a D in History at this point. Jason schedules them for an hour of homework before training and she starts writing her homework down on her arm at the end of class so she can remember what it is. She gets grounded when her mother sees her progress report and has to sneak out the window on the weekends. She thinks it might be the most normal teenaged part of her new bizarre life.

Trini throws Zack into the wall and feels the zap of her helmet receding, the breeze on her face. Everything on the ship smells vaguely like saltwater but the constant light mist of the pit is refreshing after a spar. She swoops her wattle bottle up and drains it, feeling her armor curl its way back into her chest where it lives next to her heart. "You're so good at this," Kim sighs, coming up to lean on the rocky wall beside her. "The best of us, I think."

"He'd be better," Trini grunts, jerking her chin at where Zack is lying on the ground making dramatic noises, "if he'd stop being so himself."

"We like him that way," Kim says. "Remind me of that the next time he tries to climb into my zord."

/

Jason catches her in the parking lot. "Hey, let me use your phone?"

Trini puts her hand over where it's stuck awkwardly half out of her front pocket. "What? Why?"

Jason's jaw twitches. He looks embarrassed. "I… got grounded." Trini's smile is large and broad and he grins back a little even as he flushes. "I know, I know. But Alpha says there's been some troubling activity in the north quarry. Need to send out a mass text."

Trini unlocks her phone and hands it over. "Good to know even the team leader has to do the dishes in the morning."

Jason flushes. "My mom's real particular okay, and my dad-how'd you know, anyway?"

Trini shrugs, keeping her face flat.

Jason sighs. "I have added PE in the mornings, to make up for not being on the team. Can you catch Kim and let her know we're meeting an hour earlier today?" He sees her flash of confusion and continues, explaining: "she's grounded too."

"How do you know?"

Jason slaps her phone back into her palm and walks backwards, hands out. He twists his face into a comical frown and hunches his head into his shoulders, shrugging.

"That's not what I look like," Trini mutters, turning away.

Kim is sitting in her English class, in one of the desks along the wall. She's glaring at the dirty tiled floor and her pencil is creaking in her closed fist, just one more faint clench away from snapping. Trini pauses just into the doorway, breathing soft and letting her ears filter away the click of the talk and the chatter in the hall, passing footsteps and conversations she doesn't care about, squeak of sneakers and lockers rattling open and shut.

"She's been hanging around that new kid too," some blonde is whispering, two rows back. Her friend smiles that smile Trini's known her whole life, the mean quirked smirk with perfectly shaped lips; scalpel precise words with their razor sharp edges.

The blonde's friend smiles wider. When she speaks, it's purposefully louder than a whisper "Maybe she's fucking all three of them. Pulling a train in the trainyard."

Kim's pencil snaps with an audible crack and she puts her hands on the edge of her chair like she's about to get up and provide more business for the local dentist's union; Trini's feet kick into motion.

"Unlikely," she says, brash and loud enough to yank everyone's attention to her as she slides into a desk and drags it close to Kim, their knees touching. "Since she's dating me." Kim's eyes go wide and her mouth is opening and Trini's in it now, isn't she, so she reaches across to put one hand on the back of Kim's neck and draw her close.

She pauses, just before. It's never been her style to presume and even with Kim's lips close enough she can feel their warmth she waits. Kim's eyes are on hers and she doesn't know what Kim reads in them but they flutter shut and just a fraction of a second later, they're kissing.

It's quick, for a first kiss. None of that emotional breathing and lingering and shy blushes or happy smiles after, just Trini touching Kim's knee once to reassure her and no tongue and the awkward bump of their noses. They break quickly, Trini tilting her head to murmur in Kim's ear, soft and hidden under the buzz of the gossip bubbling up around them. "Meeting got moved to three." Her fingers are in Kim's hair, silk under the crunch of spray coating her loose curls. She sits back in her chair, leaving her leg extended between Kim's calves.

Kim is inscrutable, except for the faint blush rising in her cheeks. Her dangling fingers close around Trini's ankle, her nail finding the prickle of a few hairs Trini missed when she shaved that morning. "It's a date."

/

The whispers follow her about all morning. When she cuts after lunch and goes to the bleachers, Zack throws an apple at her, grinning far too wide. "Stop," she says, holding up one finger. "Do you really want to say what you're thinking about saying?"

Zack's face flickers.

"That's what I thought." Trini snatches the cigarettes from his hand and shoves the apple into her pocket, her fingers shaking around the little pack of matches she carries.

He takes it from her. "That's not what I was going to say."

She arches an eyebrow at him.

"Okay, maybe it was." He strikes the match and cups his palm around it to keep it burning long enough for her to get the cherry glowing. She releases the first drag without inhaling, letting it flutter up in a thick cloud of nicotine and tobacco smell. "But it shouldn't have been."

Trini snorts. "A prince."

Zack touches her wrist. "I mean it."

Trini looks away. She concentrates on the feel of the smoke in her lungs and the tap of her thumb on the butt to ash it, the birds in the distant trees. "It doesn't matter."

Zack's fingers curl around her, a little too firm, much too awkward. Neither of them have any practice at this. "You do. You're real and you matter."

Trini drops the cigarette even though it's only half gone and grinds her toe into it. Zack drops her wrist and steps back, rubbing at the back of his head. "Jeez," he mutters. The bell rings in the halls behind them and he sighs. "Hey. Do you wanna come over before the kumbaya? I've got the van."

"Wait," Trini says, after they've parked. "Teach me how to say something."

"She speaks English," Zack says, cracking the door open. Trini glares and he shuts it again, gingerly. "Okay, geez."

" _Wo shu Trini_ ," she says, half garbled and poorly accented, if his little wince is any indication. She says it six times in the car out loud and ten in her head on the way to his front door. He kicks garbage off the stoop and flushes, a little darting look back to see if she's noticed the peeling paint on the windows and the overdue bills peeking out of the mailbox. " _Wo shi Trini_ ," she says, while he's fitting his key in the lock.

His mother lives at the end of the hallway in a little bedroom. There's a blanket and a pillow lying rumpled on the couch and she doesn't see any other bedrooms. They stand in his tiny kitchen, too small for both of them at once, Trini half in the living room, while he makes soup at the one burner stove. She follows him down the hall and he says something quick she doesn't catch before: "This is Trini, Ma. She's a friend."

"A friend," his mother says. She looks at him sidelong and says something light and teasing that makes him duck his head and smile all sheepish, then raises a faintly trembling hand up for Trini to shake.

" _Wor she Trini_ ," Trini manages, just barely.

"Oh," Zack's mother says, her fingers tightening before she pats Trini's wrist. "I like this one."

Zack drops her at home. He speaks while she's undoing her seatbelt. "How do you-"

" _Me llamo_ ," Trini says, knowing instantly what he means.

"I knew that one."

Trini hesitates. She reaches deep. " _Toi la_."

" _Toi la_ ," he says, his accent excellent. " _Toi la Zack_."

Trini breathes in and out. She gets out of the car, leaning through the open window to prop her elbows on the frame of the door. "You were right," she admits. "It matters."

/

"So," Kim says. "Are you ever planning to talk about our new relationship?"

Trini tugs her hoodie over her head, enjoying the faint pull of used muscles. "No." She shoves her training clothes back into her duffel bag and slings the strap over her head..

Kim huffs. "Come on."

Trini sighs. "An impulse," she admits. "I…" _I didn't like how they were talking to you_ , she thinks. _I didn't like the way they made you look and I couldn't stand there and watch you crumple into yourself like you aren't one of the strongest people i've ever met. Like you're someone I wouldn't die for._ "I had a solution and I used it."

Kim frowns.

"And," Trini rushes to add, "it's a good cover. Breakfast Club detention isn't going to last forever, and two girls and three guys is always going to be more normal than us alone."

It's thin, but Kim just sighs. "I appreciate it. But you don't have to."

"I don't have to do anything."

"Trini-"

"I didn't have to come back." The admission takes Kim by surprise, drawing her up short. "I didn't have to tell you guys what Rita said. That she thought I would betray you. But you deserved to know, and you deserve better than the rumour mill at Angel Grove High."

Kim watches her, thinking quietly. "People are keyed up. Repairs, funerals… when things die down, though."

"When things die down," Trini agrees.

Kim smiles, tentative. "I think this is the most we've ever talked."

Trini shoves her feet into her sneakers. "Then it's enough for one day."

/

The adjustments are surprisingly minimal. They all sit together at lunch except now Trini shoves at Zack's shoulder until he budges up and she can sit next to Kim. Kim glowers at Freddy Zuckers in detention until he scuttles away and they can shove their desks together and let their knees rest against each other.

"I'm expecting a very elaborate prom proposal," Kim tells her, and catches the square of paper Trini flings at her face between two fingers.

They pass notes in biology and sometimes they carpool. When Kim's old friends walk by and glower and the other kids glare, Trini tries. Tries to touch Kim in small quiet visible ways, her wrist in the halls and her shoulder at lunch. Leaning her head on Kim's shoulder to nap during assemblies.

Trini opens her locker between classes and there's red marker on the metal. _Fag_ in jagged crooked letters. Her history book is shredded and damp and the whole locker smells like piss. She looks at it for a long moment, considering.

"Ah," Billy says, from behind her. He fishes latex gloves out from his bag and hands them to her while he breaks into the janitors closet and comes back with a plastic bag and a roll of paper towels. "Used to happen to me all the time," he says, as they clean together. "Well, not the... The f-word part-actually yes, once."

Her locker now smells like piss and cheap bleach, but it's clean. She'll be out fifty bucks eventually for the book. She raps her knuckles on the neighboring locker to pull Billy's attention. "Hey. That doesn't happen to you anymore, does it?"

Billy's eyes smile. "Not anymore. Not since us."

Kim bursts into her English class in the middle of a dramatic reading of The Crucible. The teacher sputters and the other kids murmur, but Kim just casts her gaze about the room, eyes searching until they meet Trini's. She strides down the aisle, kicking a bag out of the way carelessly, and leans down to press her lips against Trini's, fierce. Trini feels her eyes close, automatic. Kim's hair tickles her cheek. "You heard," she says, when Kim pulls away.

Kim's hand is on her shoulder, possessive, it slides down to grip her wrist and then press their palms together. "I did."

" _Ms. Hart_ ," her teacher is hissing, scandalized and furious, and Kim rolls her eyes before one last pecking kiss.

The whispers come in while Trini is in the hallway. Kim and one of her old cheerleading friends threw down in homeroom over Trini's locker, ending in Kim calmly but methodically ripping the girl's purse into strips of fabric and then storming into Trini's class. "You're on steroids, apparently," Trini tells her when she swings by the front office before Kim's sent home early.

Kim shrugs. "I guess, sort of." She leans in close to keep their next words private. "You still sure about this?"

Trini has never been good at backing down. She goes on her tiptoes to bring her lips to Kim's ear, looking like an embrace while she whispers: "Jason's gonna kill you."

Kim laughs, surprised. Her eyes, Trini thinks, before she shakes herself, are harder than Trini thought. Still waters run deep, but Trini's always found something more appealing about a storm barely contained.

/

Trini is in bed when her coin flares up so hot and painful she comes awake with a choked shout, clutching at her head. She flails, falling out of bed, and fumbles at her phone. It's buzzing with messages, and she reads enough to grab her shoes and jump out her window without checking first, running for the mines.

Jason is already there, Zack arriving only a few seconds after she does. "Alpha detected a few leftovers from Rita's rampage. Not Goldar, but enough to do some damage. We think Billy went off to check it out on his own. Kim's checking the North Side, I'm going south."

"East," Trini says shortly, waiting for Zack's nod before they let the morph sing free, bursting out in layers of light and armor until the visor closes dark over her eyes. She runs.

"There's nothing," she comms, half an hour later. "Anyone have any luck?"

"No," Zack replies, slightly out of breath. "Jason?"

The comms are silent.

Kim's voice rings through clear and worried. "Jason?"

Trini stops running, turning her body towards the center of town. "Jason?"

"Hold on," Jason says. "I can- just give me a minute."

Trini calms her breathing. She clenches her fists and waits to be aimed.

"I can feel him," Jason says, slow and almost muddled. "I… I think it's the fucking Krispy Kreme."

Trini gets there just behind Zack, smashing through the window next to him while the alarm blares and the sirens ring in the distance. Billy is crumpled in a corner, still and unmoving, and Trini can't tell if he's breathing from within his suit. Three of Rita's shitty mudrock monsters are raging behind the counter, splintering freshly remodeled glass and molded plastic and stainless steel appliances.

Kim goes sailing over Trini's head, crashing into the first one, and Jason flanks her, supporting. Zack goes left, and that leaves Trini to take the one in the middle. It feels easy after Goldar, although she can see remains in the rubble that suggest there were more than three when Billy got there. Even with just one, she has to stay sharp, stay focused. There's training, she thinks, and there's combat, and no real way to make yourself totally prepared for the latter.

There's a sharp crack and Kim makes a noise that Trini has never heard any person ever make, high pitched and shocked and agonizing, and Trini has whipped around before she realizes what she's done, searching Kim out with her eyes. Kim is lying on the ground, a monster standing above her, and Trini, just for a single split-second beat of her own thundering heart, is frozen.

"Trini!" Billy's voice startles her out of it and she turns back just to see the creature's arm raised high. Billy rises up between them, arm hanging loose and unnatural by his side and his armor flickering, and takes her hit across the face. He drops in his sweats and his t-shirt and Trini launches herself, screeching in pure rage. She can hear Zack behind her, shouting. " _He's hurt_ ," Zack keeps shouting, " _he's hurt really bad_."

"Take him," Jason orders, audibly winded. "Zack and Kim, take him back to Alpha. Trini and I will handle this."

They stagger back, limping away from the incoming cops and leaning on each other to make the long walk into the mines. "We gotta get more cars," Jason pants, his arm heavy around her neck.

Trini grunts in response, her ankle screaming. "None of us are making it home tonight."

"Sleepover," Jason suggests. "Me and Billy at Zack's, I'll text. You take care of you and Kim?"

"Yes," Trini agrees, shortly. She thinks about her mother's response and winces. "Do you think the Ranger shit changed the hormones in our pee?"

Jason's step falters. "What?"

"Nothing, never mind."

They sleep in the medbay. Billy is very small and very still on the bed, his head swathed in bandages while Alpha fusses around them. Trini thought she'd stay up, be too keyed up and guilty and furious with Billy and herself to sleep, but she underestimated the effects of bone deep exhaustion and adrenaline crash, bitter on the back of her tongue. The last thing she sees is Jason bent over Billy's bedside, Kim's hand on his shoulder.

/

Trini finds Jason in the infirmary after school, by Billy's side. She'd stopped at the florist but couldn't think of what he'd like. She thought he'd prefer weird electronics from the junkyard but she'd hopped the fence there and couldn't distinguish between pure garbage and garbage he'd enjoy. She went to the art store and found a roll of fine tip pens in the same colors as his pencils and wrapped them in her jacket to protect them from the water. She lays it against his side and pauses. Adjusts the way the sheet is lying under his limp fingers.

"I told his mom he's at my house." Jason's voice is hoarse, dark circles under his eyes. "It'll buy us the weekend, but if he doesn't wake up by then…"

Trini doesn't have a solution, and she's not one for false platitudes. She looks at Billy's slack face, the white bandage covering one eye. Pats his wrist once and turns to leave.

"Wait," Jason says. "He can hear us. That's what-what Alpha said. He's asleep but he can hear us. You should say something." He stops by her on his way out, and his hand hovers over her shoulder before he drops it. "You should say something," he repeats, and the door whooshes shut behind him.

Trini stands by his bedside. She can't think of anything to say that isn't trite and awful and cliche. She touches his wrist and then thinks he wouldn't like that, so she withdraws. "I'm sorry," she says, finally. "I'm sorry, Billy. Get better, okay? We, uh. We need you."

Jason is waiting for her outside the room. "It's my fault," she says, ripped from her chest before she can stop herself. "I saw her go down, and I just-" She swallows. "I saw her go down."

Jason shakes his head. "We've been Rangers for barely a month. You shouldn't blame yourself." Trini is silent. Jason does touch her shoulder this time, feather light. "She feels the same way," he says, and she folds into him. Doesn't raise her arms and hug him back, but she doesn't have to, because he understands. Lets her lean her head into his chest and fist her hands in his shirt and breathe ragged until she can stand on her own two feet. "You have to remember," he tells her while she drags her fingers under her eyes to carry her tears away someplace safe and unseen, "that you went down because she went down, and Billy took a hit for you. We'd all die for each other, all of us. We are all in this just the same."

/

Kim is sitting high up on the cliff. "I'm glad they closed the mine down," she says when she hears Trini approach, her boots on the rocks and the dirt. "Can you imagine trying to sneak our zords in and out of here on the regular?"

Trini stops just behind her. "I visited Billy."

"Alpha thinks he'll wake up tomorrow." Kim has a twig in her fingers, snapping it into smaller and smaller pieces.

"That's not what Jason said."

Kim smiles, sudden and and a little sad. "You know Jason. He worries." She pats the dirt next to her. "Stay a minute."

Trini settles next to her. They dangle their legs over the edge and Trini looks at their mismatched sneakers with the backdrop of the fall below them. "I love it up here," she admits. "I always have."

"Me too. I'm not surprised I never saw you, though."

"Because you wouldn't have noticed me?"

Kim shrugs. "Maybe. And because you wouldn't have wanted me to. You can be-" she stops, her face twisting up before smoothing out. "You are very good at not giving anything away if you don't want to."

Their knees bump together. Trini nudges at Kim's heel with her toe to make her smile and ignores the rock digging into her ass. "I like it here," she says, slow, "because it's not so bad to be alone, when everything feels alone." Kim tilts her head, and the moon is hitting her hair just right and Trini doesn't think she ever said that she likes it short like this. "Look," she says instead, and Kim turns her head, obedient. The cliffs are jagged and the water is still and vast and unknowable, the trees jutting out into the dark and backlit by the stars. They can hear the insects and the birds and the creak of the wind through the leaves.

"It's beautiful," Kim says. _It's vast_ , Trini wants to say. _Look how vast our universe is and look how far away the sky is and feel how small every single human on earth is and we are all of us, always, alone_. "That's not quite right, is it?" Kim looks rueful but she's smiling. "I'll figure it out someday. Figure you out. Maybe you'll wake up one day and just tell me."

Trini thinks she gathered up all her words a long time ago and tucked them into her chest and let them die and she thinks maybe she wears her solitude like an armor that's thicker than any rock from space could give her. But she leans her weight against Kim's side and Kim's hand slides into hers and it feels, somehow, like enough.

/

"Field trip," Zack mutters to her during the passing period. "Full school, overnight. Jason's gonna flip."

Jason appears at their lunch table with a plan. "You and Kim go," he tells Trini. "Zack and I stay, take the grade hit. In case something else pops up or Billy needs us. You're only one town over."

Kim and Trini trade looks. They meet at two in the morning at the mine and run to the next town, clocking it. Half an hour one way. "I don't like it," Kim admits, while they're making their way back through the trees on the mountains to remain unseen. "We shouldn't be apart right now."

Trini makes a noise, noncommittal. She half agrees.

Kim sighs. "Field trip," she mutters. "I'm glad it's you, though."

Trini can't hide her surprise. "You are?"

Kim just looks at her. "I trust you."

/

Trini walks around the courthouse and stares at the statue and doesn't take any notes no matter what the head of the history department hisses at her. Inexplicably, they are roomed together, and one of the kids that sits next to her in biology nudges her shoulder, grinning good naturedly. It's a gesture of camaraderie she's not expecting, and it keeps her quiet and thoughtful until she's sitting on the cheap motel bed while Kim brushes her teeth in the bathroom and the chaperone puts duct tape across the outside of their door.

"Y'okay?" Kim pokes her head out, dripping minty froth.

"I never thought of myself as being from Angel Grove," Trini admits. "But we-it's our town. They're our people."

She hears Kim spit. She pads out barefoot and slides under the sheets. They're supposed to sleep feet to head, a direction that caused a ridiculous amount of sixty-nining jokes during the assembly. Trini has absolutely no desire to be kicked in the head by the pink Power Ranger, fake girlfriend or not. She lays her head on the pillow and watches Kim watch her back.  
"Sometimes," Kim says, slow like she's still thinking it out. "It feels like we're theirs, instead of them being ours. Like we're stuck here, forever, until we die and our coins move on and trap someone else."

Trini lays her hand on Kim's hip, over the blankets, a chaste comfort. "But not stuck alone."

Kim's eyes crinkle up. "No. Not alone."

The air conditioner is growling and she can hear the television in the next room over, muffled through the wall. "Tell me something," she asks, quiet.

Kim blinks at her, slow and sleepy. Trini thinks she's either choosing not to answer or too drowsy, and her own eyes have fluttered shut by the time she hears Kim reply. "I'm a bad person," she whispers. "And I deserve to be trapped."

Trini wakes up because someone's blowing on her face. It's Kim, face lax in sleep and very close, her breath warm and sleep sour, her leg wriggled under Trini's and their arms over each other's waists. Trini lets herself wake up slow, feel the warmth of their bodies against the mattress and the rough of the sheets on her skin and how her breathing matches Kim's, automatic and natural.

Kim stretches as she wakes up, her toes skating down Trini's calf. Her eyes open. "Hey," she greets, hoarse and drowsy.

Trini breathes and watches Kim's chest rise and fall in tandem. "Hey," she says.

Kim brings her arm up and rests her hand over Trini's heart, below her sleep shirt and soft on her bare skin. "Can you feel it?"

Trini's heart beats in counts of five, alive under Kim's fingertips. "Yes," she says, relief so strong it would leave her weak kneed if she were standing. "Billy."

Kim smiles, brighter than the sunshine outside. "He's awake."

/

Billy wakes up and Apha unwinds the bandage around his eye and they watch with their breaths held. At the last second, Trini turns away. She remembers how his bones felt like broken marbles and the way his face had dipped in, unnatural and awful and alien and how he looked like a wax statue for a second, like her brain wasn't able to process that it was him, a human, her friend. Not with his skull dented and his eyesocket cracked, and she remembers seeing the connective tissue to his eye and that it was rounder than she thought it would be and her stomach rolls.

Kim's hand grips hers and Kim's shoulder bumps against her side and when Kim lets go, Trini feels the loss of it like there's no air in her lungs. But Kim is just sliding her palm around Trini's side and across her back to grip her hip, reassuring and firm, and when Trini looks up Kim is there, steady and calm. "It's okay," Kim whispers, leaning close. "He's okay."

Trini takes a deep breath. She leans against Kim until she hears Alpha's satisfied click and Billy's happy clapping. "What's so good about a black eye," Zack is asking, but his voice is relieved. Trini snaps her gaze to Billy, panic starting to pound hot and awful in her chest, but it is only a black eye. A grisly one, but nothing that would need medical attention. Billy blinks and obediently tells Jason how many fingers he's holding up and the last thing he remembers and then casts a look sideways and Kim and Trini.

"Do girls really like bruises?"

Kim dips and kisses his eyebrow, feather light and careful not to put her hands on his shoulders and overwhelm him. "We really do."

Billy beams. Zack is grinning and even has an arm slung around Jason, and Kim is showing Billy pictures of the get well card they made and forgot in Jason's half-fixed truck in the junkyard. "You shouldn't have done it," Trini snaps.

They blink at her. "Trini," Jason starts, tone gentling.

"No. He needs to hear it." Trini leans closer. "You were sloppy, and stupid, and you almost died."

"He saved you," Zack protested, and Trini makes a sharp movement in the air with her hand.

"Not that. You kept things from us, again. You went off on your own. If we hadn't figured it out, if we-"

"I thought it would help," Billy blurts. "We kept arguing, Kim said she wanted to run away-"

"Hey," Kim objects. She flushes. "I didn't… mean it."

"It helped last time." Billy's chin sets, stubborn. "When we were fighting. It helped when I…"

Trini feels the wind go out of her sails. She deflates, stepping close to curl her fingers around the rail of the infirmary bed. "If we're in it," she says, catching their eyes one by one. "Then we're in it. Together."

"Well that's the question," Jason says. "Are we in it?"

"Yes." Their eyes all dart to Zack and he shrugs at them. "I know. I'm surprised, too." Jason reaches out and he shies away, faint but enough Jason just smiles and drops his hand to the bed, close enough so that Billy can twitch his fingers and feel their skin touch.

"Me too." Billy squares his shoulders and tilts his head up so he can look at them out of his good eye. "Always."

Trini holds her breath and they wait her out. "I'm in." It feels climactic and anticlimactic at the same time, admitting it to herself at the same time she tells the rest of them.

Kim steps to her, shoulder to shoulder. Unseen, hidden by the bed and their bodies, her hand slides into Trini's and holds it tight. "Together."

"And Trini was right," Jason adds, turning a reproving gaze to Billy. "You can't keep things from the team anymore. And no one runs off on their own." He reaches out to touch Billy's black eye, the green-yellow ugliness ringing purple and blue bruising, swollen. It hurts just to look at. Jason's face flinches; Trini remembers what he's looked like, the past few days. What he looked like when he carried Billy "You're our heart," Jason says, heavy. Grieving and so relieved it hurts.

"No," Billy says, "I'm the leg."

It breaks the the tension and they giggle, fond, and Billy smiles at them, uncertain at first and then warmer when he realizes they're not making fun of him. They quiet down at the same time, huddled in a circle, their coins glowing in their pockets.

"Together," Jason says, quiet and firm and everything, "we are more."

/

Apparently the latest urine test her mother sent in came back with funky hormone readings. Trini sits at the table and picks at her dinner and listens to her mother's increasingly ridiculous listing of drugs she might be taking. Her father gave up somewhere around 'those pills made of eraser shavings and hot sauce I heard about on the news' and her brothers are busy feeding their vegetables to the dog under the table.

Trini's phone buzzes in her jacket and she checks it, automatic. It's a picture-Kim in a sports bra and jogging bottoms and her hands wrapped, striking a pose. _Jason says I look just like hillary swank_.

Trini's finger blurs into motion, tapping. _she dies_

 _don't pull the plug on me babe_

Trini half smiles before she can help it. _that's not how she dies_

"What is that?" Her mother's voice breaks into her musings and Trini jerks upright, her feet thumping on the floor.

"Nothing. A friend."

"Who-" her mother stops, surprised, her mouth still slightly open. "A. A friend?"

"Yeah. Are you familiar with the concept?"

"Don't speak to your mother like that," her stepfather admonishes. Then he smiles at her mother. "She's made a friend. That's good, right?"

"Yes." Her mother eyes her, suspicious. "What kind of friend?"

Trini shrugs. "Kimberly Hart." Her mouth tugs upward. "She got kicked off the cheerleading team."

Her mother zeroes in. "For what? Drugs? Drinking?" Her voice drops to a horrified whisper. " _Teenaged pregnancy_?"

Trini props her shoe against the table because she knows it drives her mother crazy. "Distribution of child pornography."

Her father flaps a hand at her mother's sputtered outrage. "Honey, bring her over for dinner this weekend. We'd love to meet her."

"Not a chance," Trini mutters.

"She comes over or the car's gone for the month."

Trini walks up to the girl who sits next to Kim in homeroom. "Move," she snaps.

The girl-Bethany, Trini thinks, or maybe Beatrice, stares at her. "The seating is alphabetical. You… are you even in this class?"

Trini looks at her with dead eyes until she scuttles away. "Bye, Amanda," Kim chirps after her. "You're so charming," she adds when Trini slides into the desk and lets her bag thump to the floor. "Is this how you convinced me to go out with you?"

"Please. You convinced me to go out with you. Chased after me for weeks. I felt so bad I had to say yes." Trini meant for it to be biting but it comes out softer, fondly.

Kim's eyes crinkle up. "You're playful today. What's up?"

Trini frowns, her good mood abruptly gone. "My parents want to meet you."

"Oh, cool."

Trini gapes. "No, not _cool_. My parents are a shitshow of crazy. And they will-they will not take this well, okay?"

Kim shrugs. "Parents love me." Trini makes an inarticulate, strangled noise. Kim peers at her. "Are you gonna go to your own homeroom, or…?"

Trini huffs. Kim pats her hand. She scoots her desk over until they touch and doodles _Mrs. Kimberly Kwan_ until Trini snatches her pencil away.

/

Trini's mother has been cooking for hours. Trini tolerated three comments about what she's to wear and four about what foods Kim likes and after that she fled to the roof, crouched in the sun and waiting the hurricane out.

Kim walks up the path to her front door and squints up into the sun, hand held aloft to block the glare. "Is that where we're eating?"

Trini looks both ways before sliding gracefully over the edge to land on the sidewalk. She looks at Kim. "Really?"

Kim looks down at herself. "You don't like it?"

Pretty blouse with sleeves rolled up to the elbow, the graceful definition in her forearms and jeans that show off the narrow flare of her hips and her long legs, jacket dangling from two fingers. Trini doesn't _not_ like it. "Pink," is all she says, gesturing at the top. "Do you want to include a nametag that says 'I'm a Ranger, ask me how'?"

Kim raises an eyebrow and Trini touches her yellow beanie, defensive. "I had this before."

They walk up to the front door together. Trini reaches for the knob and Kim stops her. "Wait." She links their hands and squeezes once, reassuring. "Okay."

Trini looks at their fingers wrapped tight around each other. She feels Kim's skin against hers. "Okay," she agrees.

Kim smiles real pretty and talks real soft and helps her brothers set the table. She teases them and ruffles their hair and shakes Trini's father's hand and tells her mother that she is considering picking up field hockey as an extracurricular. Her makeup is perfect and natural and she makes eye contact but not too much eye contact and she keeps her elbows off the tabletop while she compliments Trini's mother's cooking and her lovely home.

After dinner, they're shooed away and Kim stands awkwardly in the middle of Trini's bedroom, looking at the bare walls and the rumpled bed. She looks around while Trini kicks her dirty socks under the dresser and finally flops over on Trini's bed, looking up at the ceiling. "I think that went well."

"I hated it."

Kim rolls her eyes. "Shocking."

Trini steps closer. She drops her hand to Kim's ankle, sliding below her jeans and above her flats and letting her fingers close gently around the delicate bones. "I hated it because it wasn't _you_."

Kim blinks, rapid and shocked. Trini breathes slow and even and waits her out, until Kim exhales with a shudder and then laughs at herself, turning her head away to wipe at her eyes. "Fuck. Sorry."

Trini lays next to her, their legs dangling off the side, shoulders touching. They stare at the ceiling together until Trini's mother calls them down for dessert.

Trini walks Kim to her car. "Thanks," she says, because she feels like she has to. "You didn't have to do that."

Kim shrugs. She gets in and Trini shuts the door for her. Kim cranks the window down. "Hey. You got something to do tonight?"

Trini looks back at her house, the twitch of the curtains betraying someone peeking through. She gets into Kim's car and looks at the windows, the glow of light and home; she feels warmer in Kim's unheated car than she ever has in her own house.

They go to the train tracks. Kim sits on the gravel next to the metal and crosses her legs and looks up at Trini, sly smiled. She produces a beer from her jacket, Trini's father's brand and still sweating drops from the fridge. "Still think I was putting on too much of a show?"

Trini sits next to her, their knees knocking together. "Did your sticky fingers catch a bottle opener?"

Kim's smile turns down slightly, then up to full wattage. "I'd say hold my beer, but…" she puts the cap behind her teeth and leverages until it pops free with a hiss and a wisp. She laughs, full and bright in the cold night air. "I've always wanted to do that." She toasts in Trini's direction. "To Ranger strength."

They pass it back and forth until it's gone, the empty bottle clinking as it rolls on the ground. "To Ranger strength," Trini agrees, much too late to be a toast, but Kim just smiles at her with soft eyes, the lines of her body relaxed.

"Pretty good date for fake girlfriends."

Trini looks up at the moon, full and bright and dappled by clouds, hanging up among the stars. Her coin pulses in her pocket and her blood sings. "Yes."

"Hold on." Kim touches Trini's shoulder, turning her. In the faint distance the train horn blows, growing louder as it draws near. Kim's fingers are under her jaw, tentative and cold against Trini's skin. "Not a real date without a goodnight kiss."

She stops just short of Trini's lips, heavy lidded gaze tinged with hesitance, and Trini closes the distance. She thinks-she thinks Kim tastes like beer, and garlic, and the fake fruit of her chapstick.

The train horn blows again, suddenly very close, and they startle, breaking the kiss. The train roars past them, the rattle of the wheels and the wind gusting their hair in their faces. Kim laughs, brilliant and sharp and so alive, and Trini feels the answering ring of it in her chest, rising up until her cheeks hurt with her smile, the force of her joy.

Trini's mother is at the sink when she gets home, draining the suds away. Trini tries to creep by the kitchen and her mother sighs the way she does. Trini stops. She readies herself for a fight. When her mother speaks, the quietness takes her by surprise, off-footing her. "We were close when you were little."

Trini stays silent, shifting a little and frowning hard, her keys still in hand.

Her mother turns her head, just enough Trini can see her smile, quiet and wistful. "You were such a good baby. We never even had to proof the house. And so good with men."

A snarky comment is on the tip of Trini's tongue, and she swallows it with an effort. She can still smell Kim a little bit, the vanilla of her perfume, and it helps her keep her calm and her silence.

"But not with women. You would cry and cry and cry, until they put you back into my arms." Her mother wipes her hands with the dishtowel. "I like her. Your friend."

Trini finds her voice, croaky though it is. "Girlfriend. My girlfriend."

Her mother hangs the towel from the oven handle, neatening it excessively. "A mother never wishes for her child to be gay. It doesn't mean I don't love you. But the hardships you've chosen… I would never wish for that life for you."

Trini always thought, distantly, that she would stagger. That her knees would buckle or her chest would tighten or that she would cry or even shout. But her head is clear and her footsteps are even and she shuts the door gently behind her.

She stands on the edge of the cliff with her toes just barely over the edge, swaying with the wind and feeling her center waver and ripple. She falls slowly, arms spread out, and closes her eyes to feel the air on her face before the bracing cold of the water wraps her up and carries her down. She waits until her chest starts to spasm and her vision narrows before starting to kick.

Breaking the surface feels like rebirth, cleansing, her ribcrage cracking as it expands with the first sucking gasp of air, the rush of oxygen and something quieting, if not enlightening. She floats on her back and watches the clouds roll across the dark black of the sky.

/

Trini climbs through Kim's window just as the sky has started to lighten, and is pinned against the wall a second later, Kim's forearm across her throat. She rolls her eyes. "Dramatic. You think Rita's gonna bother climbing the tree outside?"

Kim narrows her eyes. "How'd she get into your room-why are you damp?"

"Magic." Kim scoffs and Trini shrugs. She thinks it must have been something, for Rita to make cracks in her wall with her own body and not wake a single member of her entire family, including the dog. "Are you going to keep choking me?"

Kim hesitates. She leans her weight in a little. An eyebrow rises, challenging. Trini feels her blood hum. She knocks Kim's arm aside and spins, pinning Kim to the wall with the hard line of her body, Kim's hip digging into her ribs-even barefoot to Trini's boots she's taller by more than a smidge. "Sshh," Kim warns, her voice playful and her smirk edged and pleased. "Everyone's sleeping." She's in what must be her pajamas, boyshorts and a soft clingy t-shirt that's rucked up a bit from their tussling and they keep their breathing soft and controlled and their hands quiet while they exchange a flurry of parries and strikes that quickly devolve into Trini digging her fingers into Kim's ribs to make her writhe and stifle her giggles while she kicks bruises into Trini's calves.

Her instep hits the inside of Trini's knee and Trini yelps, her leg buckling. Kim's eyes go wide and she clutches at her in an attempt to keep Trini from following but they overbalance, Trini staggering backwards to cause them to fall onto Kim's bed instead of the floor. The mattress squeaks and Trini's boot thumps on the frame and a book falls from the shelf and they both freeze, holding their breath and straining their ears. The house creaks, settling, and the wind rattles the window pane. "I think we're okay," Kim whispers. Her breath flutters across Trini's face and she realizes how they're positioned, Trini on the mattress with her legs pulled up and half hooked around the backs of Kim's thighs, Kim pressed against her torso and their faces inches apart. She can feel Kim breathe and the bump of their hearts through their chests and Kim smells like lotion and mint toothpaste.

"My parents really liked you," she blurts.

Kim blinks at her. "Okay?"

Trini gapes. She shoves Kim away and sits up, yanking her beanie off to fix her mussed hair with her fingers. "Okay? _Okay_? My mom is fucking insane, she-" Trini pulls up short. She makes herself remember how the water felt, the shiver as she shook herself dry on the banks of the quarry in her underwear before she dressed. "She's insane."

Kim shrugs. "Parents love me, I told you they would. Did you come here just for that?"

"No." Trini frowns at the wall. "Maybe."

Kim flops on her back and yawns. "Did you study for the test tomorrow?"

Trini scoffs.

"Yeah, me neither. It feels pointless, right? Like we're gonna go to college out of state? Take the train back to fight alien rock monsters on the drop of a dime?"

"Hard to care about biology when the world almost ended and you're wanted by the National Guard."

Kim rolls on her side, poking at Trini's hip until she faces her. "You don't feel it?"

Trini frowns. "It?"

Kim's face is oddly frozen and pleading at once. "We're never getting out of here, none of us. We have to stay."

Trini doesn't know what to say. She doesn't hate Angel Grove the way Kim does. She reaches out instead, laying careful hesitant fingers over Kim's on the polka dot comforter. "I'm here."

Kim grips her hand. Her eyes are wet and her breathing hitches. "I know. If I didn't have you guys-" her voice breaks and Trini hates it, hates the way she doesn't know why it made her ache when her mother told her she loved her earlier that night, hates the tremble in Kim's voice and the doubting and the way she sees Kim watch the trains, wistful and trapped and longing. She shifts across the mattress and Kim watches her, silent, the wave of her body and the whisper of skin on cotton and their noses bump when Trini dips to kiss her. Quiet press of lips and the barest flicker of wet on their tongues, the faint taste of spearmint and sour cherry and the crickets singing outside the window.

"You have us," Trini promises. She grips Kim's hand and Kim's face tucks into her neck, hiding in her hair. She drags her palm down Kim's side, feeling her ribs through the thin fabric of her pink shirt and her new calluses catching on Kim's soft skin, the shadow of a bruise showing under the hem from training yesterday. She feels heady and dreamlike and so young, suddenly, high on climbing through a girl's window and holding her hand and kissing her soft in the moonlight. "You have me."

/

Trini gets back from patrol last, enjoying the hum of silence in her comms and letting the armor slip away to feel the flush of water against her skin, cooling and refreshing. Her feet thump on the dusty rock and she stretches until her spine cracks; she groans, a rumble of relieved pressure.

"I figured it out," Kim announces, and Trini jumps up, her armor snapping to life as she yelps in surprise. It melts away quickly while Kim looks pleased with herself, and Trini glowers at her while she calms her heart.

"I thought I was the last one," she mutters, dragging fingers through her hair and wringing it out. "Everyone else gone home?"

"Jason wanted to wait but I told him to catch some sleep."

Must have been tired, Trini thinks, as she snags her duffel off the ground and finds a comb, settling down against the wall to work her way through her tangled mass of curls. Jason's been incredibly rigid about his responsibilities as team leader, running himself too hard and too ragged since Billy. Kim's looking at her with an odd expression, eyes lingering on Trini's fingers and her own curled into loose fists. Trini prompts her: "What did you figure out?"

Kim blinks twice. She gives herself a shake and then frowns for a second before it dissolves into a rueful grin. "I… don't remember."

Trini grins. "A genius," she teases, "a strategical prodigy."

Kim points at her. "That… didn't sound technically correct. Anything interesting on patrol?"

"There's never anything interesting on patrol." Trini starts to braid her hair back on the side, quick practiced motions and not bothering to make them as neat as she would in the morning. She's going to go home and climb up into her window and crash straight into bed, waiting to shower and worry about her hair in the morning. Kim's got that look on her face again, and Trini feels her hackles rise in response. She props her hands on her hips and raises her chin. "What?"

Kim blinks. Her face flickers, then settles into quiet fondness. "You don't have to be defensive with me."

Trini shifts. She feels suddenly, far too vulnerable on the ground and Kim is far too tall standing across from her. She stands and abandons her half done up braids. She squares her shoulders like she's going into a fight and takes a deep breath before the plunge. "I don't like it when you look at me like that."

Kim tilts her head. "Like what?"

Trini glowers. "You know what I mean." Kim's face is still blank and Trini can't believe Kim is trying to play her like this. "Forget it," she snaps.

Kim grabs her by the wrist. "No. Say what you mean."

Trini growls. "Like it's a game to you. Like you're not-" _laughing at me_ is what she wants to say, but she stops herself. "Like you know what I am and you're just. Playing."

"Playing?

Trini clenches her fists by her sides. "Like word doesn't get around. Like I don't know everyone thinks-." She breathes through her nose. "Like you're the straight girl who thinks it's funny a fag like me wants to kiss you."

Kim flinches. Trini snorts out something she means to be a laugh, dismissive, but it cracks halfway through and she draws a hand to her mouth, turning away. "No," Kim says. She grabs Trini by the wrist, iron gripped, and advances so quickly into Trini's space she can't retreat fast enough, her heels hitting the wall. "I have never. _Never_." Trini frowns at the ground, her eyes burning. She fights to keep her breathing even. Kim's fingers are on her chin, gently drawing her gaze up. "Never," Kim promises, and kisses her once and fleeting, closed mouth and infinitely gentle.

Trini's voice is raw and small and she hates the way it wobbles. "Never?"

Kim shakes her head, still just centimeters away. "Not now, not ever." Her eyes flicker and she blushes. "Sorry. Didn't mean to… blitz you like that." She starts to move away.

"No," Trini says. "Wait." She touches her hand to the center of Kim's chest, above her heart. She sinks through the armor and she makes her glove fade away at the knuckles of her first three fingers to feel the swirl of it, the glow and the tingle.

"Trini," Kim says, quiet. She bends to press their foreheads together, their armor clicking against each other. She smiles, almost trembly. "You've got galaxies in your chest," she says, and kisses her.

Trini's got Kim's hair in her mouth, somehow, and dirt under her fingernails and it smells like sweat and the body spray Zack uses and the blue glow from the water overhead makes them both look washed out and ghostly and she doesn't think she's ever had a sweeter kiss.

"Trini," Kimberly repeats, hoarse and murmured, pressing until Trini's back bumps against the rocky wall. She leans herself forward, eyes fluttering shut for another kiss, and Trini's entire chest aches with longing.

"Stop," Trini says. Kim freezes. She shifts backwards,blinking, uncertain hands and confused eyes. "I-I need time. I need to think."

Kim drops her hands. She steps away and Trini feels the loss of her, the sudden chill. "Of course," she says, "of course, yeah."

/

"Well," Zack says, "shit."

Trini sighs, playing the unlit cigarette through her fingers, her new sharp edged dexterity. "Yeah."

Zack digs in his pocket. He comes up with one of those little airplane bottles of cheap tequila. He cracks the lid open and passes it over. "Sucks to suck."

Trini rolls her eyes. She drinks, small glugging swallows until it's gone in one go.

Zack picks a tuft of grass and picks the blades into tiny pieces until the wind takes them away. "Do you think Kim and Jason talk like this?"

Probably, Trini thinks. "I don't know," she says. "Do you have any more of that?"

/

Her mother knocks at her door instead of barging in and the surprise is enough that Trini lets her in. "I'm not going to the dance," she snaps, trying to regain her footing. "How did you even know?

"The school sends so many emails." Her mother shifts the garment bag to her other arm and frowns. "Just because Kim isn't? You have other friends."

She does, Trini thinks, and imagines how Billy would smile if she went. Even Zack has agreed-he texted her a picture of his big wide beaming grin, hunched over so his mother could do up his tie for him in a cracked mirror. How incredibly irritating. She switches tacks. "I'm not wearing a dress."

Her mother lays the garment bag on the bed. "Of course not," she says, unable to keep the faint tinge of disapproval out of her voice. It unzips. "Your stepfather picked it out," she sighs. "What he knows about your measurements, we'll see-too big, I think. You'll have to wear a shirt of your own, he didn't know it 'didn't come with one'."

Trini touches it, hesitant. A blazer, secondhand maybe but tailored, and pressed slacks. "He bought this for me?"

Her mother's next sigh is fond. "Fathers," she says, "fathers and their daughters."

Trini sits at her desk and lets her mother do her hair, holding still so the iron doesn't burn her. She remembers when she used to sit on her parents' bed and pitch a fit while her mother worked the tangles out after her bath, and how they fought over the tightness of her braids. Her mother finishes the last curl and hesitates, like she's thinking of kissing Trini's cheek or temple. Instead they fight over Trini's sneakers until her mother throws up her hands and storms away to shout her frustrations out with her husband.

"Trini," her youngest brother hisses from the other side of her closed door. "Trini look."

A tie pokes through the crack. Trini picks it up, feels the fabric against her palm and between her fingers. She opens the door, her brother still belly flat against the floor. He peers up at her. She picks him up and sets him on his feet. Presses a kiss against his temple and tells him there's a bag of skittles hidden behind the canned soups in the pantry and watches him race off.

She shoves the tie in her pocket and checks her hair and makeup one last time in the mirror hanging in the hallway. She opens the door while she's twirling her keyring around her index finger and kicks the door shut behind her, trotting down the front steps towards the curb. She freezes with one foot still on the lawn.

"Hi," Kim says.

She's breathtaking, a goddess in pale pink and kitten heels. "Hi," Trini replies, dumbly.

"I was uh," Kim waves a hand, vague and blushing. "Gonna rent a limo, but…"

They both look at Kim's car, peeling paint and crooked bumper, four hundred thousand miles on the engine.

"My mom did my hair," Trini says.

Kim smiles. "Yeah?"

Trini touches the side of her head, her perfect braids and her crimped bangs and her artful curls. "Yeah." She thinks she could tell Kim that her mother loves her, and that's enough, most days.

"I like your suit."

"I like your dress." It's awkward between them the way it never has been before, and Trini frowns at the ground.

Kim touches her wrist. "Hey. You just say the word, and it's dropped."

Trini raises an eyebrow. "Just like that?"

Kim hesitates. She leans into the car and comes out with a small box. "I was going to get yellow, but I thought you'd roll your eyes."

"Right," Trini says, dry, "this isn't a statement." It's a pink corsage, nestled in its wrapping.

"It is. If you want it to be." The plastic of the box pops and rattles when Trini takes it and cracks the tape open on the sides. The pink is the same as Kim's armor and the petals are velvet on her fingers. She turns it over in her hands. "Let me," Kim murmurs, and adjusts it on Trini's wrist just so. She kisses the center of Trini's palm. "Go to prom with me?"

Trini's heart is beating rabbit quick, her pulse rushing. "Yes," she says, and everything goes quiet and still long enough for her to hear Kim's quick intake of breath between her teeth, to see the curve of her smile grow.

The boys are waiting in the parking lot. Zack whoops good naturedly at her suit and Kim tells Billy he's looking sharp as anything she's ever seen and Jason sidles up to Trini before they walk away from the cars. "It's my dad's," he says, apologetic. "I know the color is…"

It's ugly, is what it is. Too big for her and too dark to be called mustard, too light to be anything classy. But Jason helps her, fabric whispering through his fingers. He helps her sit the knot at her throat and smooth her collar over it and she walks into the gymnasium with a yellow tie around her neck and her boys at her back and Kim's arm in hers.

Trini's been hit by a train and fallen from a cliff and been in a giant alien robot and she's sat in it and felt the heat and the thickening of the air and thought, truly, she was going to die. And none of it comes close to extending her hand to Kim when the music shifts to something soft and slow.

Kim searches her face. "Are you sure?"

Trini shrugs. "I could ask the DJ to dedicate a song to you, but this feels-"

"Trini." Kim's voice is quiet, almost pleading.

Trini takes a deep breath and holds it in her lungs. "You're real," she says, "and you matter."

Kim takes her hand. They find a little bit of space and it smells like sweat and deodorant and rubber mats and Trini's palm is sweaty but Kim draws her close and they rest their foreheads together and shuffle their feet in little circles. Their feet bump and Trini hates this song, she honestly does, but their bodies are pressed close and two songs back Trini's tie had been too tight so she'd undone it and draped it around Kim's neck instead.

"This is real," Kim says.

Trini slides a hand around to the back of Kim's neck. "Yes," she says, and goes up on her tiptoes to kiss her girlfriend at the prom, perfectly simply ordinary and absolutely everything all at once.


End file.
